


Comet

by Cinderstrato



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Mother-Son Relationship, One Shot, Trek Women, Unconventional Families
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-31
Updated: 2013-01-31
Packaged: 2017-11-27 15:03:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/663373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinderstrato/pseuds/Cinderstrato
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything that Winona Kirk left behind in Iowa, and the one thing that left her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Comet

**Author's Note:**

> This is a heavily edited version of a story that I posted eons ago. Being a sucker for family drama, I've always found Jim's connection (or pointed lack thereof) with his brother and mother intriguing. My perspective on Jim and Winona's relationship has changed over the past few years, and I couldn't help but come back to this piece and update it a bit. Thanks for reading.

  
Jim is three years old when it happens. She's holding him close -- it's just the two of them stargazing in the backyard tonight. They're lying in the cool grass, his warm, sweet-smelling, wriggling weight curled against her chest and his little head tucked beneath her chin.

It's quiet and unbearably lovely. Pinpricks stars have been sprayed like sequins across the sky above the old Kirk farmhouse, and even though she's seen more constellations and distant planets than she can count, there's something especially beautiful about the stars in Iowa skies.

Her leave will be over soon, and then she'll be in the black and beyond until the Earth is just another planet, another wavelength in the expanse of space. Jim will lay out here with Nana and Granddaddy Tiberius instead -- he'll watch the stars with them on pretty summer nights.

Winona tries not to think about it, not because it hurts to contemplate everything she's leaving behind but because she feels relief at the prospect of freedom. It's the sensible option, even if it means no quiet stargazing, no Iowa skies, no sweet, warm babies to hold. It's better this way. Safer.

Jim squirms restlessly in her arms, kneading his chubby fingers into the grass, and she glances up to see a comet trail across the inky darkness. A small one, barely noticeable to anyone who isn't trained to see it, but Jim is following the comet's movement with such narrow-eyed intensity that Winona feels an eerie shudder coil down her spine.

A moment later and it's gone, disappearing beyond the barn, and she's grateful for a reason she can't explain.

Jim keeps watching the empty sky.

* * *

  
  
Jim is six when she comes home on extended leave. Starfleet doesn't need her anymore, and she's tired of endless shifts and lonely nights and missions she no longer can summon the energy to care about.  
  
The sedate farmhouse is the same and so are the people who live in it. Everyone's a little older -- the burden of the years have stitched new seams in George's parents' faces -- but they're all as they were when she left.  
  
Especially Jim.  
  
It bothers her, though she tries her hardest not to show it. Sam has changed more than the others, teetering as he is on the cusp of manhood, but there's very little of his father in his round face or his silent, resentful bookishness. He's cold to her, having reached the age when children learn that they aren't obligated to love their parents. She flutters and fusses to soothe his hurt, the guilt nibbling at her until he softens enough to kiss her goodnight.  
  
But Jim -- Jim is still George's boy, all too-blue eyes and blond hair that floats over his scalp like cotton fluff. He's a passionate, clever little creature, insatiably curious about everything in the universe. He begs for sips of Nana's honeyed tea and bounces gleefully on Tiberius's lap and plies Winona with the tenderest affection. She had expected him to be different, somehow, and the reality is disappointing.  
  
He was supposed to be her little comet. That horrible brightness should have burned out as he hurtled further away from her. Instead he seems to be gaining speed, flaring until her eyes ache to look at him.  
  
So she doesn't.  
  
When he wants to go outside on quiet summer nights and stargaze, she tells him to take his brother instead.  
  


* * *

  
  
Jim is nine when she leaves once more. It's too much to cope with, and she needs to get away. With Nana long dead and steady Tiberius just laid to rest, the farmhouse is at once too empty and too full. She's confined, depressed. Loving Jim and Sam isn't enough.  
  
She meets Frank, who's nearly as lonely as she is. They marry in the winter at the courthouse, and his presence is a welcome buffer between her and the boys. Sam hates him, of course, and at first Jim seems more ambivalent, though he is quick enough to follow his brother's lead.  
  
It doesn't matter, not really, because Frank will look after her boys while she's off-planet. Maybe when she comes back, everything will be bearable again. She doesn't know exactly what she's waiting for, but when the time is right, she can come home for good.  
  
Jim doesn't cry when she boards the shuttlecraft that will take her to the spacedock. She clutches his small hands, kisses his forehead, and tells him to be good for Frank, all without once looking at him. She's gotten adept at not making eye contact.  
  
Sam squeezes out a few frustrated tears that are rapidly shuffled away. Jim stands next to his brother, too still and stoic for a child, and something painful tugs at Winona's chest. For a split second she hates herself, and then the shuttlecraft is taking off, zipping over the long highways at an impossible speed. Her frenetic heartbeat levels, and she sags into her uncomfortable seat and lets herself cry a little.  
  
She can breathe again.  
  


* * *

  
  
Jim is thirteen when she receives the first message from the police. Yeoman Mrithri calls her away from refitting a Jeffries tube to inform her that the _Philomene_ has received an urgent call from Earth concerning her son James.  
  
Her first reaction is fear, fear not just for Jim but also for what she might have to see on the screen. She and her son keep in touch through sporadic audio messages only -- no face-to-face conversations, no instant holos out here in the farthest reaches of the Alpha Quadrant on a bare-bones science vessel. On the bridge, Captain Trujillo gives her a brisk, sympathetic nod and directs her to the ready room and the only console that allows live feeds.  
  
Steeling herself, she opens up the channel to find Jim staring back at her with a pale, scraped face, flanked on either side by police officers. She hardly listens to the convoluted recounting of how exactly her son had stolen George's antique automobile and driven it off a quarry cliff or how Frank is insisting on charging him for theft, reckless endangerment, and destruction of personal property. She hardly hears Jim plead with her for understanding or the officer ask her whether she wishes to contest Frank's charges. She hardly knows what she says in reply.  
  
All she can see are Jim's eyes. It hurts to look at them. They're too bright, but it's a different kind of brightness than she's used to.  
  
They burn with anger.

* * *

  
  
Jim is seventeen when Winona retires from Starfleet. She's ready to leave the past behind her now, ready to let go and settle herself in that old farmhouse. It's almost abandoned, having been gradually deserted by aging parents and runaway children.  
  
Sam is alive, at least, as he deigned to contact her after four years of absolute silence. He's in college somewhere, studying xenobiology, and Winona is sure that he won't come to Riverside now that she'll be living there again. Frank is off-planet, fresh out of the detention center and toting along a new wife, but she doesn't like to dwell on Frank -- remembering him means that she has to remember Jim's thin, bruised face, and her gut churns with sour regret. It's better not to think about it.  
  
When she steps off the shuttlecraft, Jim is the only one there to greet her. She sees his outline from the window; tall and slim and athletic, he's wearing a black leather jacket like one that George used to wear on shore leave. Jim's grown into a beautiful man, she can tell, even as she ducks away from his gaze as they share a brief hug.  
  
When she pulls away, she can't stop herself from taking a peek. He's smiling a charmer's smile, and it strikes her then that he's finally changed. He's changed, and she feels sick. She only wanted him to shine a little less brightly, only wanted to be able to look at him without seeing his father. She didn't want _this_. Jim was supposed to fade out just enough to be bearable. He wasn't supposed to look at her with such flat, bitter eyes.  
  


* * *

  
  
Jim is twenty-five when he comes home in triumph and tragedy.  
  
The Federation is clambering for a symbol, something hopeful to drown out the grief and devastation, to soothe the tattered delusions of security and the crippling loss of a Federation homeworld. The _Enterprise_ is hoisted up as Earth's savior, defender of the lost Vulcan, and her figurehead is Jim, Captain Kirk, the brave young hero. Everyone tells Winona how proud she must be, how much her son's courage must mean to her.  
  
She doesn't tell them that it doesn't mean anything, that she's not proud because he isn't her son. She's never really been his mother, so it's only fair.  
  
He doesn't call or visit, and neither does she. But Sam contacts her to repeat the  harrowing stories Jim has shared with him -- they're in a better place now, she and Sam, so he says nothing when she pointedly makes no mention of calling Jim herself. Instead she stows away dozens of holovid newscasts about Jim and his crew, hoarding them in the farmhouse like private shame. He looks confident, handsome, and happy, dressed in Cadet reds and Command gold -- he looks nothing like himself. She can almost pretend that he isn't the baby she remembers loving, that he isn't that warm, sweet-smelling, tender little thing that tucked his head beneath her chin and watched the stars.  
  
On the kitchen table she keeps a framed holo, an official portrait of Starfleet's youngest captain. She loves that holo, because she can look into those blue, blue eyes without seeing a shade of someone else. At last it doesn't hurt to look, but it's too late for them now. She'll go on as she always has, and he'll go farther, her little comet streaking across the sky and vanishing from her sight.  
  
It's better not to think about it.  
  


* * *

 


End file.
